11 thoughts on “Money Can’t Buy Me Love?”

Former Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner, who had planned to run in the primary but is the only major non-DFL endorsed candidate who is not wealthy enough to self-finance, just dropped out of the race.

Applause for Gaertner. She’s doing what’s best for the party, and what RT asked the rich guys to do as well. Maybe not being a millionaire made it easier for Gaertner to withdraw, but I think it’s mostly about being a woman. Not just that Gaertner doesn’t want to hurt Kelliher’s chances of being our first woman governor — but I don’t think women are as likely to have the kind of metastasized egos that men have, believing that their money makes them indispensable to the good of all.

As much as I dislike the convention/endorsement process, the fact that the only 2 others who did not go that way are the 2 people who are attempting to buy their way into the end game seems to me to be distasteful.

Maybe i am being unfair to Entenza (about whom i do not know as much)by associating him with Dayton to this extent, but it seems to me that he could have gone thru the endorsement process–after all, he is as much a product of the endorsement process as are any of them.

There are, to my mind, lots of legitimate reasons to avoid the convention/endorsement process–you are not a DFL insider, you are a moderate/conservative Democrat, you really feel that your message will not fit within the narrow confines of the party faithful, etc.–but neither Dayton nor Entenza seem to fit within those boundaries.

What do you like, PM, for getting candidates before the public? I agree that conventions are too much about party insiders and don’t always give us the best candidates. I like the Maine idea Mrs. Fay mentions (good lord what a civilized state). How do we get good candidates on the ballot? Petition drives?

I’ve already argued on this blog often about giving public airwaves to candidates, free, including cable time. I believe the answer to too much money is giving access to the people away for free.

This sounds like a pretty convoluted nomination process….In Maine we have a “clean election” publically funded option for candidates who chose not to either use their own cash or fundraise. The bar is pretty high for qualifying, but there are still abuses. We just lost a candidate whose staff was accused of bad faith (or worse) in collecting the needed seed donations!
The system isn’t perfect but it does allow those without means to even the playing field through hard work.
It seems to work!

Gaertner: “Two important facts weighed heavily in my decision: 1) That the endorsement of Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher would pit two women against each other in the primary, and 2) with two self-financed and well-funded male candidates, the resulting struggle would make it extremely difficult to raise sufficient funds for an effective campaign.”

Reading that comment out of context, I can’t help but hear that as a shallow, gender-driven cop-out. No support of MAK’s merits, just her gender. And why is it relevant that the two self-financed and well-funded candidates are male? Why not mention that they’re both old white guys, too?

Every candidate who pulls out of races CLAIMS altruistic reasons (“for the good of the party,” “to spend more time with my family,” “to bring everyone together to beat the bad guy”) and nearly every candidate who pulls out ACTUALLY is driven by political viability reasons.

I think Gaertner pulled out because of lack of political viability. She wasn’t viable because she couldn’t fund a competitive campaign and couldn’t dominate the slice of the primary voters who, all things being roughly equal, prefer a woman candidate (which might have been the case if the primary field were Rybak, Dayton, Entenza, and Gaertner).